Episode 764: Award Apathy and Splashy Stats
Date November 11, 2015 Summary Ben and Sam banter about daily-fantasy ads, then answer listener emails about Barry Bonds and splash hits, end-of-season awards, when to spend on free agents, baseball and the metric system, and more. Topics * Gold Glove and other award voting * McCovey Cove splash hits record * Impact of Matt Harvey's 2015 workload on future injury * Extreme pickoff to balk ratios * When to sign players in the offseason * Baseball with the metric system Intro The Beach Boys, "Don't Go Near the Water" Outro The Hives, "Introduce the Metric System in Time" Banter * The New York Attorney General declared daily-fantasy sites to be illegal in the state. * Sam is surprised at how quickly people got angry about the repeated daily-fantasy commercials, considering they were going to see advertisements anyways. Email Questions * Ben: "I hate Gold Gloves but I want to like Gold Gloves. How can we fix them? What if we allocated three per league to outfielders and two to middle infielders and two to corner infielders. This would allow two great center fielders to each get one and allow you not to have to pick someone like Cole Calhoun. Same applies for middle infield in the NL, in this case not shafting the best defensive player in baseball because the Braves sucked more than the Giants. Is there anything that they could do?" * Michael (London, UK): In the spirit of two recent topics I did a quick check on the number of splash hits by a single player into McCovey Cove. What will happen first, a Yankee sells more jerseys in a calendar year than Jeter, the Giants switch stadiums, the Giants leave San Francisco, baseball ends, or someone overtakes Bonds in splash hits into McCovey Cove." * Tom: "If Matt Harvey comes to spring training and has any sort of injury there will be articles written about it being due to the Mets and him throwing his innings limit out the window. However if he gets injured in 2022 these articles will probably not still be written. Should they be written? When is the soonest Harvey could suffer an arm injury and his 2015 workload not be discussed? At what point would you personally not attribute a future arm injury to his 2015 workload?" * Sam: "I saw a brief mention on another site about Dan Duquette's tendency to make big signings late in the offseason (Nelson Cruz stands out). With an admonition that other teams may be well positioned to play the waiting game this year, the implication seems to be that the later a player signs the less money they take. Indeed, I think some rather large signing (Cano, Fielder) have happened early in the offseason when teams jump to take guys off the market. Yet I've often read that Boras prefers to wait for the market to develop and allow more teams to get in on the bidding. I can see some sense in both ideas if there is a clear best free agent at a position such as Cano, maybe the team has to pay a premium to sign their guy early in the offseason. Yet even in a year like this with 20 qualifying offer worthy players and three ace starting pitchers, maybe if a team waits while Price and Cueto sign elsewhere they would have to pay even more in years or dollars for Greinke. Of course GMs can help themselves about being flexible where they improve their team, but if your starting third baseman or shortstop is Will Middlebrooks or you end up with five number one starters like Miley, Porcello, and Bucknasty, you are delusional and soon to be out of a job. If you upgrade your corner outfield instead of your areas of need. What do you think? Is there a consistent game theory advantage to signing players early or late in the season?" * Jared: "How would the game of inches be different if it were the game of centimeters? In other words, what if we had always used the metric system given our love of round numbers? If there is magic in the bases being 90 feet apart, maybe baseball would never have caught on because what are the chances that we would have landed on 27.432 meters between bases? Maybe it would have been 25 meters or 30 meters. How many famous ball and strike calls would be different if the strike zone were 43 centimeters instead of 43.18? Would an entire class of relievers have been less special because it doesn't sound as impressive to be able to throw 160.934 KPH. Bat sizes would likely be different, etc." Play Index * Sam uses the Play Index to see which pitchers are the best all time at picking off runners relative to the number of balks they were called for. * Kirk Rueter picked off 30 runners and never balked. * Andy Pettitte picked off 98 runners and balked 11 times. * Carl Pavano balked 16 times in his career and only picked off 3 runners. * Steve Carlton has the most balks all time with 90. Notes * Ben says he is apathetic about all awards and Sam agrees but says he "still looks". * Barry Bonds has the most splash hits, hitting 35 home runs into McCovey cove. Pablo Sandoval is second with 7. * Sam, on his Play Index, "I don't think I've done this before, but if I have, podcast is free." * From 2007-11 players signed before January 1st averaged .86 WAR over the life of their contract and teams paid $5.52 million per win. Players that signed after January 1st averaged .92 WAR over the life of their contract and teams paid $3.6 million per win. Links * Effectively Wild Episode 764: Award Apathy and Splash Stats Category:Episodes Category:Email Episodes